Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

I've seen people do it with the Bloodhound's Fang sword or dual katanas. The claws and the Reduvia are common for bleed builds too.

I'm still mostly using my starting samurai armor, but I did finally find a cool helm that was worth switching out: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Nox+Mirrorhelm

Finally found this weeping peninsula everyone's been banging on about (It's right there, how did I miss it). Slayed a bunch of Mick Hucknalls and even a couple of Thicc Hucknalls, no real issues that is until I had to face the miniboss, Lionel, who is vicious as anything!

It is crazy to me that I spent a couple days sniffing around Liurnia at the start and today I blew through the Darkroot Depths in 90 minutes. This game is messing with my sense of scale

I just found some area I knew i was underlevelled for and some giant disembodied hands mashed me. Fun.

I feel massively under knowledgeable about builds and stuff. I tend to put my runes into Vigor and Strength, or whatever I need to use a particular weapon. Only just managed to get into magic and it's rudimentary at best for me right now, so trying to throw Faith a few coins too

yeah, I'm getting vigor, endurance & strength up to 20 or so then pushing other stats up a few points for weapons or incantations that I want to try out - I'm slightly messily spread over faith, dex and arcane (wanted to use the reduvia). I'll guess I'll get focused on a build when I have those 20s, but tbh I don't know really what I'm doing and I've probably already screwed up some min-max optimum.

I am finding it quite hard to grind up, I must say. I can spend a good while trying to beat minibosses only to get around 1000 runes (and then inevitably lose them in a stupid accident like falling off a cliff)

i’m assuming there’s some sort of runes redistribution mechanism at some point as in most DS games.

i’m a complete lunk. loads of vigor and strength and decent stamina so i can whack things.

I was pretty ruthless about low-level farming - like if I need 2k I'll clear the gatehouse ruins, for a few hundred clear the demi-humans and knights having a fight near the seaside ruins (rest and repeat if necessary).

I've held back from deliberately making for farming spots I've read about but I've ended up at one naturally now - fgti mentions it upthread, ~1k per very manageable enemy, which takes some pressure off when I need 2/3k for a level. I can't bring myself to do the big cheap dragon-kill jackpot tho'.

I'm loving my twinblade. Does a really satisfying twirly thing which is brilliant for mashing up enemies on my horse

xxxp there is indeed, it's fairly flexible but not entirely so, rebirth involves defeating Rennala then finding and using a Larval Tear ewww icky

xps yes, I believe there is. No idea how far away it is but I'm assuming my current mess of a non-build will do till then.

One of the more annoying elements of DS2 was that enemies stopped respawning after a certain point, which made farming tough. I think the idea was that this was the game's way of making things easier, but given other aspects of DS2 and From in general I wouldn't be surprised if they did it just to make things harder.

ds2 was my first, so my From-memory is always half-expecting that disappearing enemies thing. I remember finding it a huge relief at first & then realising that it was a pain in the arse not being able to farm hollows (but not wanting to use that bonfire item that would respawn everything).

A list of things I think are good ideas:

1. Plan to end the game with your vigor levelled to 50
2. Throwing away points into an otherwise unused stat to "be able to use armament x" is a devil's bargain and should be avoided
3. Don't consider your build to be "a [stat] build" until that stat has reached 50 (more like 60)
4. Don't consider your build to be "a [stat]/[stat] build" until those stats are both at 30
5. Upgrade your endurance to 20 (all playstyles) or 25 (most melee) or 30 (heavy armor intentions) and leave it there and don't upgrade any further

That was another aggravation of DS2, needing to upgrade agility or whatever to get iframes when you roll.

All these games, for PvE it's basically upgrade vigor and endurance to at least their soft caps, more as needed/wanted, and then throw everything else into a couple of secondary stats (like strength or dex or intelligence) that support your playstyle. I think if you're doing PvP then other factors come into play, right?

I feel massively under knowledgeable about builds and stuff. I tend to put my runes into Vigor and Strength, or whatever I need to use a particular weapon. Only just managed to get into magic and it's rudimentary at best for me right now, so trying to throw Faith a few coins too

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Tuesday, 15 March 2022 11:05 (two hours ago) link

I am finding it quite hard to grind up, I must say. I can spend a good while trying to beat minibosses only to get around 1000 runes (and then inevitably lose them in a stupid accident like falling off a cliff)

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Tuesday, 15 March 2022 11:20 (two hours ago) link

same, same. i still get most of my runes from crushing glowing skulls and finding the cemetaries where you can walk around and pick up a bunch of them.

i kept reading about going after trolls for "easy" grinding so i tried that yesterday and kept getting killed. i can see how they're "easy" but i just suck lol. i managed to kill one but only by sniping it with arrows from a cliff for a long time, but it used way too many arrows for that to be a good strategy.

I actually don't think "easy grinding" exists in this game. I have found that the easiest way to level your character up is to find the right place to be at any given time. Even when I was like "huh I wish I had about a dozen Smithing (4)s", and I thought about googling where to farm them, I instead just naturally found the tunnel in which they were plentiful

In true From fashion btw I've run into a handful of "how did people figure this out without a walkthrough" moments. "Wear the correct hat and make the correct gesture which you only learn after you do [x]" is kinda wild. "Speak to the NPC who you think is dead not once, not twice, but thrice in order to progress their quest line" is also kinda wild

It's shit like that though that recalls my favourite 80s/90s Roguelikes like Moria and ADOM and what-have-you. Games where you can only actually win the "true ending" if you complete a convoluted series of tasks; this ending was discovered not by in-game discovery but by code-diving

basically my lunkhead build is for doing a run where i don’t read anything.

and i’ve got a nascent dex/int build mainly because i want to do the blaidd storyline which i f’ed up in my main build, and i’ll probably read much more on to get all the fun hidden things.

2. Throwing away points into an otherwise unused stat to "be able to use armament x" is a devil's bargain and should be avoided

I needed to hear this, I was this close to respec-ing 6 useless points into Int just to use the sword that puts people to sleep. :/

Wear the correct hat and make the correct gesture which you only learn after you do x" is kinda wild.

Right? Like, I could have possibly figured it out from looking at the names of the gestures, but was there an npc or a clue that told you what kind of crown to wear?

lol this kind of shit is why I follow walkthroughs. It's hard enough to know what to do and how to do it when you know what you need to do and how to do it, but all that really obscure stuff is just fucking with all but power players, imo.

I resolutely do every area blind either until I've beat the boss or until I get stuck, and then I review the walkthrough to cover shit I missed

My most recent weakness was running into Valiant Gargoyles and feeling like it was an impossibility, reviewed the walkthrough, found the extremely-overpowered summon Mimic Tear, levelled it up some, then used it against them and they went down (but only barely)

Yeah it's crazy reading about how people are playing the entire second half of the game using Mimic Tear to beat all the bosses. .

I haven't been using spirit summons just because it doesn't seem particularly fun for my playstyle, so I'm sorta dreading hitting a late game wall where some bosses are built around them. Very curious to see how my experience compares to all the people complaining about difficulty on twitter.

I think I'm headed that way soon fgti, so we will see!

Gonna be honest, the text list of warp points in the map just blew my mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEQCRFcIogY

distortion2's now under 30 minutes for his latest any% elden ring speedrun.

Gave up on Radahn for a bit, headed to Leyndell instead, made some glacial progress getting killed over and over until finally reaching Godfrey, somehow managed to beat him first try. Then carried on to Morgott and smashed him to bits first try too! I kind of find the bosses in this less stressful than fighting multiple normal enemies or whatever. Now I need to work out how the fuck to get out of town to go to this elevator…

I know those speedruns are often done using various glitches and exploits, but I wonder how From feels about people figuring out how to finish them so fast so, well, fast.

I also know previous From games were notorious for including OP weapons and stuff at launch that subsequently got nerfed. Right?

xp Good list! I knew most of those except the text list warping and the rune-acquisition bonus.

I was annoyed for a minute that I couldn't dupe a remembrance that I'd already used, but you can! and you can dupe it again (if you wanted!) so you can theoretically run around with Godrick Axes in both hands if you so desired. Almost makes the tedium of felling those mausoleums worthwhile :)

Radahn is intensely insanely difficult but I'd recommend "trying new things" to try and beat him, because the optional area that opens up as a result is some useful pre-Leyndell questing.

I actually still haven't started Leyndell yet. I did get pulverized by a couple of Sentinels while trying, once!

and you can dupe it again (if you wanted!) so you can theoretically run around with Godrick Axes in both hands if you so desired

Ooh, that is cool, although I haven't encountered any boss weapons yet that I want to use. I wish there was some way to duplicate other unique weapons.

I just poked my head into Leyndell this morning, and it felt like I'm a bit under-leveled for it so I'm going to explore elsewhere (like that optional area you mention). Tbh I don't really like racing through an area picking up loot, I'd rather wait and go through it slowly when I'm ready for it.

I know those speedruns are often done using various glitches and exploits, but I wonder how From feels about people figuring out how to finish them so fast so, well, fast.

I think it's a credit to the 'open-worldness' of the game, and obviously "finishing" the game in 1/2 hour means you're not engaging with 95% of the content.

I also know previous From games were notorious for including OP weapons and stuff at launch that subsequently got nerfed. Right?

Yeah, Dark Souls 3 had a bunch of balancing patches for weapons and mechanics. I'm a bit surprised they haven't fixed some of the obvious glitches yet (like the Eclipse Shotel/Fire's Deadly Sin thing), but I also wouldn't be surprised if they didn't nerf much in terms of damage. It seems like the whole idea is to eventually have a bunch of flashy, overpowered tools at your disposal and to just put it all in a blender.

The crazy thing about the speedrun is that the top time was roughly 30 minutes longer like two days ago

So many of the boss weapons have a three-stat minimum which makes me hesitant. I should really be saving those mausoleums so I can duplicate the specific remembrances that offer a choice between two spells/incantations (if I'm interested in 100%-ing, which I never follow through, but always have on my mind)

Look I'm still using a plain old Lordsworn longsword I got in a drop right at game's start, and have levelled it up to +3 and my glintstone staff to +7, because I thought I read somewhere that in the end the weapon doesnt matter as much as how levelled up it is?

But I am still finding it impossible to melee attack anything but passing zombies/skellies. My staff is pretty good now, 1 or 2 hits a lot of mobs, but FP is finite. I'm just shit at rolling out of the way I think :(

Im thinking of starting again (again) .

Nothing wrong with the longsword! I don't know why you would start again? Better to keep going imo, you can always take the character in another direction.

I feel like i've misallocated my stats, maybe? I piled it all into HP and FP and nothing else. Not even end or str

Look I'm still using a plain old Lordsworn longsword I got in a drop right at game's start, and have levelled it up to +3 and my glintstone staff to +7, because I thought I read somewhere that in the end the weapon doesnt matter as much as how levelled up it is?

But I am still finding it impossible to melee attack anything but passing zombies/skellies. My staff is pretty good now, 1 or 2 hits a lot of mobs, but FP is finite. I'm just shit at rolling out of the way I think :(

That's fine! HP is the most important, there will always be time later for damage stats, and you don't need much endurance unless you're doing heavy armor/big weapons. And eventually you'll be able to re-allocate if you really want to.

xp

Thats good to know!
plus a mace on scaly things that need whacking.

ohhhh I sold a mace I'd got in a drop, ive always thought them useless, but I was vaguely aware some things have hard armour/scales. Actually it even seems like my glintstone shard spells bounce of some kinds of higher level knight armour/shields.

def overlevelled, just completely owned godrick with +7 wolverine claws

I have some of those claws, thinking of trying them, they do bloodloss which always seems handy.

the two handed moveset is nasty, recommended

Incidentally, every last thing I have seen or read of this makes it appear very much of a piece with previous From (and particularly Souls) games. Yet this is the first From game with a conspicuous high-profile contributor: George RR Martin. But is there anything is this game that deviates or differentiates from past From games to indicate anything he may have contributed?

well all major bosses names begin with a G, R or M

It's so dumb

What I love about this is how different everyone's game is. I didn't expect the character selection at the start to have such an impact on what you can and can't do in this game